Index map
The Llano Estacado ("Staked Plains") of west Texas and eastern New Mexico marks the southernmost extent of the High Plains. One of the largest expanses of near-featureless terrain in the U.S., it is an uplifted surface of porous, uneroded Late Tertiary river sediments veneered by late Pleistocene and Holocene wind-blown sand. The region was named by early Spanish explorers who placed marker stakes to avoid losing their way on the flat land. (The faint, evenly-spaced wavy north-south lines on the map are a false artifact of the computer-processed terrain.) |
